16 BLOCKS

“16 Blocks” establishes Bruce Willis’s character, Jack Mosley from the get-go as a down and out alchy cop who has trouble getting through the day. His fellow officers use him to baby sit the bodies from one crime scene to the next after all the hard work is done. At the end of the day, he goes home, hits the bottle, sleeps it off and drags his body back to the precinct the next day. Willis is always in the moment, chin to the chest, dragging one foot in front of the other as if Jack had lead in feet. He has nowhere to go but down.

At least until his moment of redemption is near. But redemption from what?

Jack finds himself on a detail to accompany a key witness in a murder investigation to the Grand Jury just sixteen blocks from his precinct. What he doesn’t count on are the cops who want to see the witness dead. The cops are his friends - or were. He could look the other way and nobody would be the wiser but Jack is still a cop. He may be a lot of things, but he is not a murderer. His dormant policeman’s instinct, suddenly awakened,  kicks in.  Jack finds himself the savior of a low level criminal who never knows when to shut up.

Mos Def, who was so wonderful as the soft spoken lab technician, Vivian Thomas, who became a pioneer in heart surgery in the award winning HBO film “Something the Lord Made” is anything but as motor mouth Eddie Bunker. He’s a thief with a heart of gold hoping to go on the straight and narrow if he can survive the long walk to the courthouse. But it’s no walk in the park.

Bunker is led by Mosley through the back alleys of Chinatown and Lower Manhattan, through the backdoors and basements of the small shops and abandoned buildings that line the streets and finally onto a bus in  a last ditch effort to hook up with the DA at the Grand Jury. Together they dodge bullets and bad guys with just enough begrudging talk  in between to keep “!6 Blocks” from becoming a cliché ridden buddy movie.  

Contrary to his image as an action hero, Willis plays Mosely close to the bone of his character with a hard edged realism that is much closer in feel and temperament to his portrait of a Viet Nam vet in “In Country” from 1989. As in that movie, he plays a character who is forced by circumstance to come to terms with his numbing shell shock existence in order to reconnect with the man he once was. Doing his duty becomes more than just a job. It becomes his reaffirmation as a human being willing to take responsibility for his actions and the sins of the past.

David Morse also adds to the credibility of “16 Blocks” as Frank Nugent, a soft spoken but deadly corrupt cop. Richard Donner and star Bruce Willis do not make the same mistake the creators of “Firewall” made with  Harrison Ford. “ Bruce Willis never violates the parameters of his character or his age.

                                                                                                                    Copyright 2006